Remember when I once posted a name game where we had to rename ourselves by smooshing the names of our grandmas? Today I thought we could do the same thing, except with parents. Because this is actually a thing for some families and in some cultures, from what I’ve heard.
So, basically, if your name had to be some sort of combination of your parents’ names, what would it be?
The only names that I can think of that sound like they could be legit names and actually are legit names, are Jan(n)a or Anja. Jana is a Slavic name, but not Polish, as we have either Janina or Joanna, but it still could totally work and I’m sure there are some Polish Janas out there. Plus, Lucy Maud Montgomery’s character Jane of Lantern Hill is renamed to Jana in one of the Polish translations of the book. I don’t like the name at all and can’t imagine myself being a Jana, but at least the Jane of Lantern Hill connection would be kind of nice. Janna looks somewhat better to me because it’s longer and more feminine, but it also looks made-up or like a misspelling of either Janina or Joanna, and I don’t like it either. And as for Anja, I guess it would be most acceptable for me, but it would be super-confusing because my Mum goes by Ania and Anja is also very much associated with her in my mind because it’s part of her email and she’s Anja everywhere online. But if it was like a rule that people have to name their kids after themselves, then I’m sure my parents would be a lot more likely to call me Anja anyway, and my Mum had me before she had her email so she would just never end up going by Anja I guess and people would have to get used to calling her Anna or whatever else so that they wouldn’t mix us up.
It would be really lame though if it was a rule, especially for families with multiple children like ours. Sofi would probably end up as Jan(n)a, and Olek would have to be Jan, which is a perfectly normal, very common Polish name just like John is in English, but it totally wouldn’t fit him. 😀 Oh yeah and now the Danish name Naja has just popped into my brain. It’s Danish, and it’s pronounced slightly different in Danish than it potentially would in Polish, but if my parents would have yet another kid, it would do for lack of anything more fitting. Gosh, what a diverse sibset we would be – Anja, Jan, Jana/Janna and Naja, SO creative!
Im trying to think of some interesting smooshes that would have more than just Ja- from my Dad’s name, especially Jac- because I like a lot of Jac- names, but I can’t think of anything particularly interesting. Jacena sounds like it could be an English name and it’s very similar to Jacenta which is a super rare feminine form of Jacenty, but it’s not cool and I think in English most people would pronounce it jay-SEE-nuh rather than ja-SEE-nuh, and the latter would make more sense as a name honouring a Jacek, though it sounds almost like dracena or something. If we took onnly an N from my Mum’s name, Jacen could work in the English-speaking world as a khreatyve spin on Jason but it’s extremely unappealing imho. Jacanna would be kind of hilarious to see in real life somewhere in the Anglosphere but it doesn’t look overly attractive. Or Jaca! 😀 I can see Jaca both as a very un-creative feminisation of Jack, or a Polish augmentative/some sort of rural/dialect variation on Jacek in which case it would of course be pronounced YAH-tsa, and I kind of like the latter though not necessarily as a formal name. Jacna is also some sort of an idea, I suppose, but doesn’t sound or look too convincing as a name and more like some sort of Polish feminine adjective. 😀 Oh yeah and not a Jac- name, but if we could stretch it and skip some letters in parents’ names, then Jenna/Jean could be potential options in English, not so much in Polish though.
So yeah, that’s about everything that I can come up with.
What would you be named if your parents had to do this? 🙂
My Inner MishMash 
My parents’ names are David and Deanne, so I suppose I would Davanne and my brother would be Devid.
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Your parents would have it slightly easier than mine if they wanted to have a larger family. 😀
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Clauvonne.
Or Evonaude.
I think the switches would have to be made in middle letters/names.
And it helps if your family have lots of letters.
[Claude + Evonne].
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yeah, it’s definitely easier and more interesting with longer names.
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I’m only just getting started here!
The evening of 3 August was not overly conducive to imagination or to initiative.
One of the forms looked like Siobhan/Shaouvonne.
And it reminded me that back in November/December 2001 there was a woman called Lawanda who smooshed her and her husband’s name to make a name for one of her daughters.
We met through a literary forum that had not had many Americans in it or Canadians for that matter.
So some minor evangelism was done on my part among those of the forum members.
Kela was that name – first 2 letters – short and sharp and musical.
[Lake could be another one – I don’t know / remember what you think of nature names or names based on topography.
When I was a very young Polonist working through the first 20 pages of the Kosciuszko Foundation book of ~25 years before – I learnt that topology point – like Góra/Góral/Górski/Górska/Górscy
and inflections by implication.
Also some positional words eg: Oto means here is/here’s
Because I would try to watch a programme called OTO POLSKA – and it was timeshifted for sleepyheads – then it was replaced by Widzamość – and yet I see that on webpages all the time – there is probably a real word that means NewsInsights or News and Insights which is like my approximation
so I was pleased when I saw OTO in a column of words and meanings – I remember it was on the left page – AND that I was at a premium for time pressure at the City Library – or A city library.
So nature words and concepts – well, they took 25 years to set in.
And here I was thinking that 3 years was optimistic!
Especially given the interrupted and disrupted and distracted process of learning – both sending and receiving].
The “lots of letters” factor also comes in numerology.
For example, an Australian politician changed her name from Susan to Suzann on the recommendation of a numerologist. [She is also an aviator and property owner].
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Kela sounds nice. Feels Hawaiian-ish to me. Kela and Lake would be cool fictional twin names, not necessarily what I would call my style but still interesting.
I don’t really have one view on all nature names as given names collectively. Some can be absolutely adorable and some come off as rather cringeworthy. Also word/geographical names are pretty rare in Polish as given names and were banned before the naming laws have become less restrictive a few years back, with a few traditional exceptions, so before I’ve become more familiar with how naming works in the English-speaking world my brain would often be totally blown away by word names and not even just the generally controversial/radical /eyebrow-raising ones like those some celebrities use, say North or Petal Blossom Rainbow. But now I really think that a lot of common words do make for great names, especially middles.
You mean Wiadomości I guess re news/insights?
Hahah I think it’s a really cool feeling when you stumble upon a familiar word in a language you’re learning, , or even not actively learning it but kind of observing or something.
I guess Polish inflection must be generally freakishly difficult to consciously learn and figure out, there are such loads of rules and exceptions from the rules involved. And oto is a curious little word.
Ugh, names and numerology, I feel this is such a good business. No matter what someone’s name is, you can always say that it’s unlucky and they should pick a different one, with your professional help, of course. 😀 It’s also rather odd to me that numerology assumes that all names which have the same number assigned to them will have exactly the same characteristics, or that on the other hand that the name Susan would have some vastly and life-changingly different characteristics from Suzann when they’re the same family of names. I’m definitely a huge fan of using one’s own intuition plus a bit of common sense for analysing names instead.
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vladdander and vlad[zh]ina.
You should pronounce that [zh] as “j”
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Interesting ones. 😀
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Got that: Władek/lang3pro!
Especially when it comes to J.
French goes the other way around when it comes to J.
[which is: J is a ZH sound]
[Jaunette: Zhonay if you were pronouncing it the Standard Paris way].
[I had wondered if there was a Vladlena among your ancestors – this is all to do with Carrie-Anne’s Magick Theatre and her epic Russian Trilogy-cum-Saga].
And then the J would all too soon go to G.
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I love fun name games! My parents’ first and middle names are Philip Clyde and Rebecca Louise. So I could be name Philo (Philip + Louise) or Rebeccly (Rebecca + Clyde). What fun!!
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Oh! Or, Decky. (The end of Clyde + Becky!!)
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Middle names are so cool! I think everyone should have AT LEAST one. I like mine too, even though it’s super common and Sofi has the same one – Anna – I think it fits me and I can always go by Emilianna if I want lol. I think it’s a shame that we have a naming law here that one can’t have more than one middle.
Elizabeth is a great middle, I love it as a whole but also it’s nickname potential. I recently heard about an Elizabeth who goes by Bizzy and I really like that. There’s a little Elizabeth in Anne of Windy Poplars and she says at some point in her book how she can be someone different every day, depending on her mood, because her name is so versatile.
Well, I don’t really think that my Mum cares about being middle name-less. She doesn’t really think about such things. I just said she’s poor because she is from my perspective, and because she would be very poor if this smooshing parents’ names were a thing and she had to name multiple children. 😀 Truth be told I don’t even know what her middle name could be, Anna just captures her personality so perfectly. There was once a special education student who was writing a disertation about inclusion schools and including my story in it, and she asked me to come up with new names for myself and for Mum so that we’d be anonymous. I normally love coming up with fitting names for people and I think I’m pretty good at it but with my Mum I was totally stunned, because, well, she’s just an Anna. In the end I renamed her Julianna, more because I was loving that name at the time than because it fit her, and it felt really grating when I later got to read that disertation and saw her repeatedly referred to as Julianna.
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Philo is definitely a winner.
And I love the way you went with middle names too.
What about Clydecka?
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Ohhh, fun ideas!! I love Clydecka!! Nice!!
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Her confirmation name is Rita, so, hmm, not much longer. 😀 It totally doesn’t fit her.
Actually my Mum had always said that she didn’t have a particular devotion to any saints, perhaps except for st. Joseph and st. Anne, but it seems to be changing gradually now ever since we have become Traditional Catholics, going to Traditional Latin Mass etc. and she’s been reading the missal every day, which includes brief biographies of saints.
Hahah, MacKillop is such an interesting idea. But here in Poland we don’t really do surnames as names at all, not even for confirmation. . Not that there’s any formal law for that, but this would just come off as super weird and no one does that. I guess it’s only a thing for nuns and still very rare in my experienceSame about opposite gender saint names, though if there’s equivalent for the opposite gender it can be used. We’re very boring with names generally. I don’t even know anyone who would have a double confirmation name (like Mary Helen/Maria Helena) I guess one would either have to choose one or another.
I like both saint Gemma and Dymphna a lot. Sadly Dymphna isn’t very well-known here.
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Oh wow I actually really like Philo! Or you could also be Philou, like there’s Milou, Lilou, Marilou etc. so why not Philou. 😀 Or Philise, like a cooler-looking form of Phyllis.
Including middle names is a good idea and gives us more options. I mean my poor Mum with a four-letter name (as beautiful as Anna is imo) doesn’t even have a middle name, only a confirmation name, but generally middles would make things more interesting.
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I’m a total middle name fanatic!! Mine’s Elizabeth, and I wish I had use for it!! If I had to go by it, I’d choose the nickname Eliza, Betsy, or Bethy, or Liza, or Lizzie!! Oh I’m sad about your mom… oh hey why not let her choose a new middle name? Funsies!
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What is her confirmation name?
Does she have a favourite Saint – one who called to her?
If I were to go there I would have to be innovative and use Mackillop [to circumvent the four-letter problem].
Philise really IS cool!
and the -ilou names.
Also Gemma [the patron saint of migraines and headaches].
Dymphyna.
Meg: glad you appreciated Clydecka.
[there are Clydesdale horses after all and many things from the Clyde River – including Strathclyde district in Scotland].
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